Martin Scorsese's Netflix drama, The Irishman, to close 2019 BFI London Film Festival

Veteran filmmaker Martin Scorsese’s much-awaited film The Irishman , will close the BFI London Film Festival.

The Netflix drama, featuring Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, and Joe Pesci, will have its international premiere in London on the festival’s final night, 13 October.

According to the festival, Scorsese and the cast is expected to attend the premiere.

“British Film Institute Fellow Scorsese is one of the true greats of cinema as both a creator and a tireless champion of preservation and film history and here he and his creative team have delivered an epic of breathtakingly audacious scale and complexity, exploring relationships of trust and betrayal, regret and remorselessness, which dominated a period of American history.

“This is a major occasion for film lovers and I cannot wait to share this film with UK audiences,” Tricia Tuttle, BFI London Film Festival Director said in a statement posted on the fest’s official website.

Gangs of New York screenwriter Steve Zaillian, has adapted the screenplay from Charles Brandt’s novel I Heard You Paint Houses.

The movie’s official synopsis reads: “It is a film about friendship and loyalty between men who commit unspeakable acts and turn on a dime against each other, and the possibility of redemption in a world where it seems as distant as the moon.”

The Irishman is Scorsese’s first feature directorial since 2016’s Silence.

The director said he is honoured to be having the international premiere of the movie at BFI London Film Festival.

“This picture was many years in the making. It’s a project that Robert De Niro and I started talking about a long time ago, and we wanted to make it the way it needed to be made. It’s also a picture that all of us could only have made at this point in our lives. We’re all very excited to be bringing The Irishman to London,” he said.

The film will be released in select theatres and on Netflix later this year.